Many products, such as paper, film, foil, textile, sheet metal, rope, yarn, wire and cable are wound on rolls, reels or spools which weigh from 50 to 10,000 pounds. Many cannot be lifted or manueuvered manually and require the intervention of some type of powered lifting apparatus.
A number of power lifting coil handing devices and related structures are known. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,322,198 and 4,358,143.
A problem often encountered with the lifting and maneuvering of such heavy reels of material is the turning of the axis of the reel through a 90.degree. arc and the assurance that the reel holding device will not slip inadvertently. To that end a unique coil handling device is hereinafter disclosed.